Michelle Courier

Growing up in a house overflowing with artists, Michelle Courier’s creative destiny was set the moment her father made room for her in his Michigan studio. “As a kid, I watched him paint – he always looked so happy,” Courier says. “I was honored he shared his space with me when I was 16.”

With a dad who paints, a mom who weaves, and a younger brother who’s pursuing art in New York City, Courier’s entire existence is consumed by art. She attended the University of Michigan to earn a bachelor’s degree in painting and had her first solo show at 20 years old. “I learned the discipline quickly once I had to fill an entire gallery,” Courier remembers. Once she hit the western market, she spent summers photographing and camping in her van and winters painting in her studio.

Courier’s mastery of color is what sets her apart; she spent two straight years practicing color mixing, a skill evidenced today in her vibrant, contemporary impressionistic landscape paintings. “I’m there to convey the feeling I have when I’m in a place, not necessarily how it looks,” Courier says of her large-scale acrylic works.